Is the entire chapter of Genesis fiction or a historical event? I ask this because I've heard from multiple people on here that you shouldn't read Genesis literally as if Adam and Eve actually existed.
I've been through 10 years in a private Christian school and not once has any of my teachers ever mentioned that Genesis was not a true story. The same goes with the flood story. Are any of these stories supposed to be taken literally?
Something that's important to understand is that the books of the Bible aren't "chapters", they are distinct books. The same as if you go to your local library and see individual books on the shelves. The Bible isn't a book, it's a library of books.
Secondly, Genesis is a collection of stories, the stories share a basic theme of "the beginning", but there is no single "story" of Genesis. There's the story of creation in Genesis ch. 1, there's another story of creation in Genesis 2 that introduces Adam and Eve, there's another story of Noah, and so on and so forth.
The essential question to be asking when reading any particular biblical text is, "What was the author trying to communicate?" That's going to have us look to see what kind of literature any particular portion of Scripture, the book as a whole, or even the smaller parts of a book. That is, what is the literary genre? Because obviously there's a difference between The Hobbit, The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglas, and Clifford the Big Red Dog. If we aren't able to differentiate between these different sorts of literature, then we're going to be in some serious trouble.
The Bible is filled with different sorts of literature, with many different authors writing from many different perspectives with many different purposes. If we are going to understand what any given text means we have to actually concern ourselves with what the author was wanting to say, and look at how they are saying it.
So what is Genesis?
Genesis is, as noted, a collection of stories with a theme of "beginnings". This is important because Genesis functions as the prologue to the events of the Exodus. Genesis provides the narrative soil out from which the story of Moses and the deliverance of the Israelites out from Egypt is told, this is the central story of identity for Israel. Israel's religious and national identity was that of the covenant people whom God delivered from bondage in Egypt and brought to the land of promise. That is who they were, it was their relationship with God, one another, and the land. Genesis provides a prologue, telling the stories of creation, the stories of mankind, the stories of Israel's ancient patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Secondly Genesis is part of the five books known as the Torah, the central text of instruction for Israel. The Torah contains the mitzvot or instructions that guide every Jewish person's life. The Torah covers everything from how to plant crops to what offerings to give and when, and what is and is not to be eaten. To this very day the Torah is the center of the Jewish religion and defines them as a people and a religion.
With this understood then we can begin to examine Genesis itself. So how does Genesis 1 read? Well it reads like poetry for one, there is a rhythm in the days of creation, there is parallelism between the first three days and the second three days. So what we see in the first chapter of Genesis is that at the initial act of creation there already exists this abyssal ocean, the primordial sea, but God exists prior to it and above it. In other creation myths of the ancient near east the primordial abyss has a name, Tiamut, the mother of the gods. In Genesis this abyss has no name, and God exists above and before it. And where in other creation stories the world is brought into existence from the chaotic battles of the gods birthed by Tiamut, instead in Genesis 1 God deliberately calls into being the heavens and the earth.
On the first day God separates light and darkness, day and night; on the second day God separates the waters, the waters above (the firmament, a concept in ancient bronze age cosmology that a dome of water was above the earth) and the waters below; and on the third day God separates the dry land from the waters below.
Those are the first three days, the second three days are a parallel. The first three days was the creation of "spaces" or domains within creation, the second will fill them. On the fourth day God creates the sun, moon, and the stars to "rule" the day and night; on the fifth day God creates the birds to rule the sky and the fish to rule the seas; on the sixth day God creates the beasts, the things that crawl, to rule the land. And the final creative act is to create mankind in His own image to rule over it all.
This act of creating a divine image is interesting because in temple building in the ancient world the final act, after the temple structure itself had been built and furnished, was to place the image of the god itself. Here God has created the heavens and the earth, all of creation is to be God's Temple, and the final act is to place His image--mankind. This idea of "divine image" here describes man's purpose within creation, he is to be that which reflects God to the rest of creation, and to in turn offer the praises and glories of all creation back to God. Man is both the image of God in creation and the caretaker--the priest--that tends to the things of the temple.
When the text says that God rested on the seventh day, we are not to suppose that God got tired and needed a day off, but rather that God had--as the text says--looked upon all of His creation and saw that it was "exceedingly good" and thus now, on the seventh day, God can "sit down" as it were, to enjoy His creation and--if we might also think of it--set about the task of operating upon and through it. The office is complete, and the Boss can sit down and begin operations.
The second creation story, which begins after the first story ends (Genesis 2:4). It's a completely different story. Here God creates man first, when there was yet no vegetation or green thing, after creating the first man, Adam, God plants a garden for Adam to tend. God creates all the beasts and animals to give Adam a partner, but in the end God creates Eve from Adam's rib, thus man and woman. It's a completely different creation story.
And so on and so forth we can go through Genesis.
And consistently the question is, "What is the author trying to say?" Is the author trying to offer dry journalistic reporting? X happened to person Y which caused Z? Or is something else happening that might be far more interesting. Perhaps there's a reason why the author of Genesis 1 describes the primordial sea the way they do, maybe the days of creation aren't meant to describe a raw set of events that took place over a course of a week, but provide a framework of order by which to look a bit deeper. Maybe the ancients weren't idiots who put two conflicting creation stories side-by-side, but understood both stories to have their own distinct and complimentary significance that is lost if one tries to read them too woodenly, too literally.
And does that mean nothing in Genesis is historical? No. Does that mean nothing in the Bible at all is historical? Again, no--remember the comparison made to one's public library, and the existence of The Hobbit, the Life and Times of Frederick Douglas, etc. We understand that each literary work is its own work, and we examine it on its own merits by its own standards, not by our own standards forced upon it because we want it to be something it's not.
-CryptoLutheran
